One of the few truly undisputed facts in this world is that Jeopardy! is better than Wheel of Fortune in almost every conceivable way. The only edge Wheel has, and it is a minor one, is that its second and third place contestants get to keep the money they earned during the course of the show, whereas the runners-up on Jeopardy! have their totals wiped clean and are given one and two thousand dollar consolation prizes. I can’t even imagine how furious I’d be if I lost by $1 after winning, say, $25,000, and saw my take-home amount slashed by $23,000 at the end of the show. But even then there’s a simple solution, I guess, which is to just win or not whine about how much money they gave you for losing. Either way, the point I’m getting at is that Wheel of Fortune is stupid and you shouldn’t like it.

Example: On a recent episode of the show a contestant named Renee got hosed out of almost $4000 (and, as it turned out, a shot at the final puzzle) because she didn’t pronounce the hard “G” at the end of “Seven Swans A-Swimming.” While I normally would say tough cookies and move along with my day, the thing here is that the “G” WAS ALREADY ON THE BOARD. It’s not like she didn’t know it was there, or didn’t know how to pronounce the word. She just dropped it the same way most of us do while singing “The 12 Days of Christmas” (“eight maids a-milkin’, seven swans a-swimmin’, six geese a-layin’,” etc.) and the judges still wouldn’t give it to her. SHE KNEW THE ANSWER. SHE SOLVED THE PUZZLE. THAT IS THE POINT OF YOUR STUPID SHOW. AND YET YOU WERE ALL “NOPE, WRONG ANSWER” BECAUSE SHE TRIED TO HAVE A LITTLE FUN WITH THE WHOLE THING?

Phonetically, there is no “hard G” and the end of “swimming”. The “ng” represents a single sound, usually produced as a velar nasal occlusive ([ŋ]) but in many dialects/sociolects as an alveolar nasal ([n]).

Yes, it’s shitty, but having been in a game show green room, I guarantee those contestants were told countless times that the answer has to be exact. You can tell by the way that most people enunciate the crap out of every word, even when the whole puzzle has been revealed. She’s lucky the story isn’t “contestant can’t read”

If they pulled that shit on me the rest of the episode would be un-airable. I have little control over my cursing even when I’m NOT enraged. They’d have to go to one of those “Sorry, Technical Issues” pictures with a drunken monkey running a camera or some shit whilst I destroyed the set and was tazered by security guards. Of course, I’m not a fuckwit so I’d be up by a zillion dollars by that point.

She is a Master-At-Arms, which is a military cop in the Navy. I can’t believe they actually did that to her and I like how the contenstant that did win threw her own jab in at the show by saying she heard the right answer from the Sailor.

Hahaha. I totally watched this the other day and I shouted the answer with the same “swimmin’ ” mistake, and said “shit – swimminG, I would have been disqualified!” And then it happened to the contestant.

Yes, I have embraced the fact that I am old and watch Wheel after the local news.

“I normally would say tough cookies …” YOU WOULD!? Fuck that, man; even if that G weren’t already lit, that’s a fucking moronic rule. After all, if it had been an apostrophe, it would’ve been pre-lit just like the hyphen. There is no way that ‘ could’ve been there, and if they’re gonna interpret shit like that, then why not say, “No, no, nuh-uh, she said ‘7 Swans a-Swimming.’ She didn’t emphasize the ‘n’ enough to distinguish between the numeral and the word; no good!” That rule is as pointlessly pedantic as it gets.

Then again, Wheel of Fortune is awful anyway and these people shouldn’t be supporting its continued awful existence by agreeing to be contestants. So the penalties offset, I guess. Still, props to that lady for being sportsmanlike and not slapping Sajak in the face right there and then.

it’s pronounced swimmin, silent g by 99.9999999 % of u.s. americans so it is correct. the guy who determined this decision needs to go to communication school and be given leave without pay untill he learns and they need to give her the money. if she would sue them, she would win.